Mary Loretta Kelly

In the corporate world, people retire with golden parachutes, but not teachers. We are honored at a tea with fellow retirees, given a plaque -- “Thank you for your many years of devoted service to our students and community” --that ends up in a box in a closet. What this teacher kept when I retired over six years ago was a handmade box worth far more than any golden parachute. Made with loving hands out of construction paper with stick-ons and original art by a thirteen-year-old girl is a real treasure. I can’t travel on its pages using stock dividends, but I know where I’ve been in this life. 

She gave me quotes from Shakespeare that I had taught her from The Tragedy of  Romeo and Juliet and she even found one on her own, “It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but ourselves,” from Julius Caesar. She even included a line from Dr. Seuss, “Don’t cry because it's over, smile because it happened.”

When you stand before a class of young people, you never know what impact you have on an individual student. Yet I always understood I had immense power to affect them either positively or negatively, and I took that role with its inherent power seriously and wielded it as carefully as I could. For doctors it is: Do no harm; for teachers: Give them your best.

She etched her email address on the little box as well, and we’ve been in touch. Now graduated from high school, she is in college in Boston studying Art Education. And I leave you with her final words to me: “Thank you for all the knowledge that is stored in my brain now.”